SCISSION provides progressive news and analysis from the breaking point of Capital.
SCISSION represents an autonomist Marxist viewpoint.
The struggle against white skin privilege and white supremacy is key.
---
"You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future.”
FIGHT WHITE SUPREMACY, SAVE THE EARTH

Friday, April 30, 2010

Alabama officials who are in bed with the oil companies have some explaining to do. The rip is that it's not at all clear that Alabamans will ask them to do so. Surely the devastation the state's gulf coast faces will open a few eyes deep in the heart of Dixie.

Is Oil Spill About to Give Alabamians What We Deserve?
By Roger Shuler

Few states have a stronger record than Alabama when it comes to sucking up to the oil industry. So it's ironic that a massive oil spill that started off the coast of Louisiana now is moving eastward toward . . . Alabama. And it is poised to land a possibly catastrophic blow to our state's economy and environment.

Is Mother Nature giving us payback? Sure looks like it. And for comedic effect, we have a Republican Governor who now claims that oil giant BP is going to be held accountable for the big spill. But that same governor, Bob Riley, never has held big oil accountable before. Why should we think it's going to happen now?

Here is a lesson of Biblical proportions for Alabamians, one that should resonate in our supposedly hyper religious state: You reap what you sow.

For roughly the past 15 years, Alabamians have consistently voted to place Republicans on our state's high courts. The Alabama Supreme Court now has eight Republicans and one Democrat--the result of aggressive campaign tactics led by Karl Rove, Business Council of Alabama President Bill Canary, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

In November 2007, our high court overturned most of a $3.5 billion verdict against ExxonMobil in a fraud case involving natural-gas royalties. It was an 8-1 vote, and since then, the GOPers on the Alabama Supreme Court have been known as the "Exxon Eight."

Guess where much of their campaign funding came from? According to a report from Scott Horton, of Harper's, it was largely from ExxonMobil. Those same business sources largely funded the campaign of Governor Bob Riley.

When Riley had a chance to appeal the Alabama Supreme Court's unlawful ruling, one that ignored clear legal precedent, what did he do? He did nothing.

Now Riley says he's going to be tough on BP as an oil spill approaches the Alabama coast. The Mobile Press-Register reports:

Riley said BP Plc, which operated the Deepwater Horizon well that blew up April 20 and caused the spill, will ultimately be responsible for those claims.

BP officials did not return calls for comment Thursday. Riley did not say that the company had agreed to honor such claims. When asked if the company would, Riley said, "They are the responsible party."

BP has agreed to reimburse the state for the costs it incurs preparing for and cleaning up the oil spill, Riley said.

Right Guv, BP is going to reimburse Alabama the way ExxonMobil did back in 2007 for its fraudulent actions. You're going to hold big oil's feet to the fire now, aren't you?

It's starting to look like Mother Nature is a liberal. And she doesn't take kindly to conservative states that continually mock her. When you piss off Mother Nature, she can extract a fearsome price. Will Alabamians ever learn?

The new under-21 nightclub, which former Aryan Nations leader Charles Juba hoped to open, has not met city codes.

After hearing the news , Juba quickly posted this today on the club's website:

"We will be opening very soon once we have satisfied local codes."

It may not be that simple. Odessa Mayor Tom Murry said that Juba also failed to properly fill out his business application and that his license had been rescinded.

There's more. Even if Juba should make improvements to meet the fire code and submit a fully completed application, he could face new obstacles.

At a special meeting tonight, the Odessa Board of Aldermen discussed two ordinances that would give the city increased power to regulate businesses.

No action was taken because some board members felt the proposals were being considered in haste. They also were concerned that regulations aimed at Juba could unduly burden existing businesses.

One provision said that business applicants would have to exhibit "good moral character." Alderman Justin Murry questioned how the city could ever make that judgment.

"Who gets to determine who has good moral character?" he asked. "That is way too subjective."

Alderman Mark Bellington agreed.

"It may work now, but what about the future?"

As on Monday, another overflow crowd packed the Odessa Community Center. Townspeople are convinced that Juba's aim is to use The Black Flag to recruit teens for racist and anti-Semitic activities.

Unlike Monday, Juba did not show up. But a woman, who identified herself as his friend, spoke on Juba's behalf.

She said he was a fine family man who went to church two times a week.

"He's got a past, yes, but who doesn't?" Monica Loges asked the crowd. "But that doesn't mean he's in the Klan today."

But if that's true, Arluster Haynes asked Loges, why did Juba name the club The Black Flag? The name has a connection to Civil War guerrilla leader William Quantrill.

Haynes went on to say that Juba must have thought he was coming to a town of ignorant country people.

"Well, Mr. Juba didn't do his investigating," Haynes said. "Odessa is not a hick town. We know all about him."

Odessa may get help from Jefferson City.

State Rep. Mike McGhee told the meeting that perhaps legislation in the Missouri General Assembly could aid the city in keeping Juba out.

"We don't want things like this in Odessa, St. Louis or Springfield," McGhee said.

Gary Grigsby, who is running for McGhee's seat, said that he, too, would address the issue if elected.

The uproar began after word hit town late last week about Juba's past. Before that, officials were glad to see a new business go into the struggling Prime Outlet Mall near Interstate 70.

A promo on the club's website touted: "Good friends, great dancing, awesome music and live bands. We're the place where young adults can come out and have a good time and be themselves."

It invited high school students from Blue Springs, Independence, Fort Osage, Grain Valley and Oak Grove.

But then word got out. Parents combed the Internet for information on Juba. They found plenty.

He began his white supremacist career in the Ku Klux Klan. According to the watchdog group Southern Poverty Law Center, Juba once threatened African-Americans with a "swinging necktie party" and urged them to "swim back to Africa with a Jew under each arm."

In 2005, Juba, then head of Aryan Nations, announced that the group would move its headquarters from Pennsylvania to Kansas City, Kan.

A resulting outcry led Juba to quit his post, but he remained in the Kansas City area.

At Monday's meeting, residents demanded that the city do whatever it takes to stop Juba from opening his club tonight.

Juba, who is in his late 30s, appeared at the microphone that night and tried to convince people that he had walked away from his past, saying he just wanted to run a business.

The crowd didn't believe him. They peppered him about the content on his website. And when Juba tried to defend himself, they shouted him down.

Just yesterday I left a post about Houston police assaulting a young black man. Now comes news that Houston cops have beaten a Chinese diplomat and his family. Oooops!

According to CBS Houston police tried to stop a car that was missing a license plate, CBS News reported. When the car didn't stop, they pursued it into a garage. Police handcuffed and arrested the driver, injuring him, the report said. CBS News identified the official as Ben Ren Yu. The Houston consulate website lists a deputy consul-general, Yu Boren.

A surveillance camera at a self-storage business where the alleged beating occurred recorded the arrest and the officers’ behavior.

China urges U.S. to ensure inviolability of diplomatic staff, premises
BEIJING, April 30 (Xinhua) -- China on Friday called on the United States to ensure the inviolability of China's diplomatic and consular staff and premises.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu made the remarks here Friday after China's deputy consul-general to Houston and his family were assaulted by U.S. police while on their way back to China's consulate-general in Houston by car.

The incident is under investigation, Jiang said, adding that China's Foreign Ministry, its embassy in the United States and its Consulate-General in Houston have lodged solemn representations to the United States.

"We noted the spokesperson of the U.S. Department of State saying the U.S. side takes this issue seriously and is investigating it. Protecting the safety of all foreign diplomatic and consular staff in the United States is essential," Jiang said.

China urges the United States to observe the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and the China-U.S. consular treaty, investigate the incident as soon as possible and ascertain the responsibility of the U.S. parties concerned, she added.

This will be the last column I write about the Arizona Diamondbacks in the foreseeable future. For me, they do not exist. They will continue to not exist in my mind as long as the horribly named “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act” remains law in Arizona. It's a law that has brought echoes of apartheid to the state.

One Democratic lawmaker has said that it has made Arizona a “laughingstock” but it’s difficult to find an ounce of humor in this kind of venal legislation. The law makes it a crime to walk the streets without clutching your passport, green card, visa, or state I.D. It not only empowers but absolutely requires cops to demand paperwork if they so much as suspect a person of being undocumented. A citizen can, in fact, sue any police officer they see not harassing suspected immigrants. The bill would also make it a class one misdemeanor for anyone to “pick up passengers for work” if their vehicle blocks traffic. And it makes a second violation of any aspect of the law a felony.

In response, Representative Raul Grijalva, who’s from Arizona itself, has called for a national boycott against the state, saying, “Do not vacation and or retire there.” He got so many hateful threats this week that he had to close his Arizona offices at noon on Friday.

Many of us aren’t in either the imminent vacation or retirement mode. We do, however, live in baseball cities where the Arizona Diamondbacks comes to play.

When they arrive in my hometown in D.C., my back will be turned, and my television will be off. This is not merely because they happen to be the team from Arizona. The D-backs organization is a primary funder of the state Republican Party, which has been driving the measure through the legislature.

As the official Arizona Diamondbacks boycott call states, “In 2010, the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s third highest Contributor was the [executives of the] Arizona Diamondbacks, who gave $121,600; furthermore, they also contributed $129,500, which ranked as the eighteenth highest contribution to the Republican Party Committee.” The team’s big boss, Ken Kendrick, and his family members, E. G. Kendrick Sr. and Randy Kendrick, made contributions to the Republicans totaling a staggering $1,023,527. The Kendricks follow in the footsteps of team founder and former owner Jerry Colangelo. Colangelo, along with other baseball executives and ex-players, launched a group called Battin’ 1000: a national campaign that uses baseball memorabilia to raise funds for a Campus for Life, the largest anti-choice student network in the country. Colangelo was also deputy chair of Bush/Cheney 2004 in Arizona, and his deep pockets created what was called the Presidential Prayer Team—a private evangelical group that claims to have signed up more than 1 million people to drop to their knees and pray daily for Bush.

Under Colangelo, John McCain also owned a piece of the team. The former maverick said before the bill’s passage that he “understood” why it was being passed because “the drivers of cars with illegals in it [that] are intentionally causing accidents on the freeway.”

This is who the Arizona Diamondback executives are. This is the tradition they stand in.

The Diamondbacks’ owners have every right to their politics, and if we policed the political proclivities of every owner’s box there might not be anyone left to root for (except for the Green Bay Packers, who don’t have an owner’s box). But this is different. The law is an open invitation to racial profiling and harassment. The boycott call is coming from inside the state.

If the owners of the Diamondbacks want to underwrite an ugly edge of bigotry, we should raise our collective sporting fists against them. A boycott is also an expression of solidarity with Diamondback players such as Juan Guitterez, Gerardo Parra, and Rodrigo Lopez. They shouldn’t be put in a position where they’re cheered on the playing field and then asked for their papers when the uniform comes off.

[Dave Zirin is the author of the forthcoming “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.]

To Catch a Fire: Diamondback Protests Take Off

This weekend in Chicago. May 3-6 in Houston. May 14-16 in Atlanta. May 17-18 in Florida. May 25-27 in Colorado. May 28-30 in San Francisco. And that’s just May. These are the road game locations for the Arizona Diamondbacks over the next month. These are also places where protests have been called in opposition to Arizona’s racist anti-immigrant SB 1070 law, which has been criticized by everyone from Barack Obama to Karl Rove. The D-backs owner Ken Kendrick is a massive financial supporter of Arizona’s state Republican Party and that makes his team, whether he likes it or not, the SB 1070 Traveling Roadshow.

And make no mistake about it: the idea of protesting the Diamondbacks wherever they play is catching fire. It nationalizes an issue many on the anti-immigrant right would rather see tucked away in the shadows of the Southwest. Yesterday’s protest at Coors Field in Denver, home of the Colorado Rockies, had 50 people rallying as people made their way inside. Season ticket holder Jim Bullington tried to give his Rockies vs. Diamondback tickets back to the team, but they refused to accept them. Bullington said to me, “Until I hear him say otherwise, I see this racist unconstitutional law as being supported financially by the owner of the D-backs. My friends and I in Denver won’t be going to these games.”

Today’s protest in Chicago, organized over Facebook, will have hundreds of people in attendance. Orlando Sepulveda of the Comité 10 de Marzo will be there, identifying the action as deeply connected to the national struggle for a humane immigration policy. “We pledged to boycott the D-backs because we are committed to defeating SB 1070. We are committed to defeat it because we can't allow racist law to exist, but also because defeating it will build strength and confidence in our movement to win an immigration reform with justice and dignity. Being this a national issue, if SB 1070 remains on the books, we will be in a position of weakness across the country.” One particularly smart element of today’s Chicago protest is that picketers are not asking fans to walk away from the stadium. Considering that most of us buy our tickets in advance anyways, this would be rather silly. Instead they are asking fans to take in signs calling for the repeal of SB 1070 to hold up during the game.

The protest-the-D-Backs strategy is also being backed by grassroots progressives. Los Angeles based Gustavo Arellano, syndicated columnist of “Ask a Mexican” and Pacifica radio host said to me, "Not only are conscious fans protesting retrograde owners who fund reprehensible measures, but they'll remind the general fan that sports owners—far from being the apolitical people the leagues portray them to be—are businessmen who usually use the profits they make off the wallets of unsuspecting fans to fund corrupt politicians and politics. Sure, these protests will intrude on the fan's experience, but that's the point. Sports don’t exist in a vacuum."

These actions are also getting broader support, which we will see in upcoming rallies at Sun Life Stadium, in Miami, home of the Florida Marlins. Kim Diehl, the Communications Director of SEIU Healthcare Florida, supports the protests because, as she said to me, “Yes, baseball is sacred, but human lives are more sacred. I’ll be protesting the D-Backs because the law that Arizona passed which allows police to approach anyone and ask for their papers is reminiscent of the horrors of slavery and apartheid.”

There are no illusions that these protests will somehow drastically damage Ken Kendrick’s profit margins. The team’s .500 play will do that on its own. The D-Backs also play in a stadium built with $250 million in tax dollars, so Kendrick won’t be applying for food stamps any time soon. But the protests do hold the potential to keep this issue out of the shadows and when it comes to SB 1070, the light of day is not kind. Bill Fletcher, a columnist for the Black Commentator and a long time union activist - as well as a born-again baseball fan - said to me, "We have to teach a basic lesson to the corporate racist right: their actions will not be ignored. Instead they will be met with a severe and serious response.”

[Dave Zirin is the author of the forthcoming “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.]

Nothing new here. Eight cops severely beat a young black man after some sort of car chase for some sort of reason (no one seems to know what caused the "chase"). This time it is in Houston. Just another day in America.

The following is from KHOU.8 HPD officers on leave after accusations of police brutality
by Gabe Gutierrez / 11 News

HOUSTON – Eight Houston police officers are on paid leave after a surveillance camera caught them beating up a black suspect, a well-known community activist said Tuesday.

Quanell X said he has seen the tape, which was taken on March 24 outside of Uncle Bob’s Self Storage located at 8450 Cook Rd.

He said it happened after the officers attempted to arrest the suspect after a chase.

"You see the cops jump on top of this young man," he said, "And begin to beat the living hell out of him."

Quanell X said the white officers then handcuffed the suspect and continued to punch him for about two minutes. He said there was also one black officer who kicked the suspect in the face.

"I believe the black cop wanted to show those other officers that he was just ‘one of the guys,’ and he was willing to do whatever they wanted him to do," Quanell X said.

Quanell X compared the incident to the 1991 beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, which prompted riots after the officers involved were acquitted of any wrongdoing.

"I believe the officers should be indicted for aggravated assault and that the FBI should get involved to investigate civil rights violations," he said, adding that he saw the officers high-fiving each other after they were done.

Houston Mayor Annise Parker said she had not seen the tape, but promised a full probe into what happened. She said the officers had been "relieved of their duties" late Tuesday after a private citizen presented the security video to the district attorney’s office and the chief of police.

"Because there is an ongoing criminal investigation, I can’t go into detail about the incident," Parker said. "But it is interesting that we didn’t know about this until we received the security tape. We’ve taken immediate action."

The eight officers are part of the Westside Tactical Unit. Union officials declined to comment.

It’s still unclear what led up to the chase. The alleged beating victim’s name has not been released, although Quanell X described him as between 18 and 21 years old.

The community activist said he believes the suspect is in the Harris County jail after spending several days in the hospital.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Anarchists in Argentina have taken to some very direct action on behalf on their comrades currently sitting in a Greek jail. They attacked the Greek embassy in Argentina today with everything ranging from sticks to bombs. Five suspected attackers are under arrest following Tuesday night's clash. Two security guards are injured.

The anarchists were answering calls on the Internet for demonstrations against Greek embassies worldwide ahead of Wednesday's appellate court hearing in the case of Yiannis Dimitrakis, an anarchist convicted of
participating in a bank robbery in Athens.

The following is from After the Greek Riots which I think is part of the blog Occupied London, but I'm just not sure.

#264 | Freedom for Yiannis Dimitrakis! International day of solidarity

Today is the day of solidarity with anarchist Yiannis Dimitrakis, ahead of his court of appeals, which is tomorrow. Reports from the various demonstrations and actions in Greece and beyond will follow later – for now, we publish two texts translated by the solidarity assembly in Athens.

FREEDOM FOR GIANNIS DIMITRAKIS

It's been more than four years since the morning of January 16th 2006, when the anarchist Giannis Dimitrakis was arrested, heavily wounded by police fire, after a robbery at a branch of the National Bank in the center of Athens.

From the very first moment a storm of constructed information broke out, systematically supplied by the police and readily carried out by the mass media. The police constructed "the gang of robbers in black," so that other comrades could be named as members, to which was attributed a string of robberies but also a close association to armed revolutionary groups, and then it was proclaimed that the whole of the anarchist- anti-authoritarian movement is closely connected to organized crime !! Gianni's arrest, the slander and the manhunt unleashed against his three supposed accomplices (which were later on declared wanted for astronomic rewards) – four comrades known for their many years of political activity – on the one hand aims for their legal annihilation and on the other, promotes a holistic plan of stripping of meaning and criminalization of anarchists, anti-authoritarians and class struggle.

Because of his political identity, the state moved with rage against him from the first moment. Parallel to the crescendo of misinformation and impression creating by the media, the district attorney tried to interrogate him in the emergency room while he was bedridden and under pharmaceutical influence. The categories against him were based on the "anti-terror" law and enriched with six unsolved robberies and money laundering (false charges which dropped in court,) and attempted manslaughter (false witness of the cops who shot and arrested him, that he had fired at them – despite no such bullets or shells ever having been found – which allowed the judges to have their way.) He was probably the first man in custody to be held at Malandrino maximum security prison, which is intended to hold convicts only, while attacks by prison guards, vindictive transfers and disciplinary sentences, the exhausting sentence of the first trial (an unheard of sentence of 35 years) and the provocative deprivation of basic rights for the preparation of his defense at the court of appeals supplement the oppressive aggressiveness against him.

In these extreme conditions, the comrade defended from the beginning his choice to expropriate a bank, without statements of remorse and with clarity as towards his motives and intentions. He gave meaning to his act as a moment in his critique and action against the system of wage slavery and exploitation, against the antisocial role of the banks and as a part of the polymorphic social struggle.

Furthermore, in the wretched reality of the prisons, he stood dynamically and with dignity from the beginning. He participated in all of the prisoner's struggles happening the past years in Greece. Advancing to hunger strikes and abstinence from the prison meals – despite the permanent health problems given him by the cop's bullets – showing his solidarity for his fellow prisoners and fighting for the terms of his survival and existence in the difficult position of imprisonment. Along with other imprisoned anti-authoritarians he was an interactive channel of communication with the grandiose prisoner's movements in the fall of 2008.

All these reasons – and because Giannis Dimitrakis and the other three wanted anarchists are some of us, comrades and co fighters in the diversity of the struggles for freedom – fired off a mass of actions of solidarity and political defense for them in many cities in Greece and around the world.

His appeal trial will begin on April 28th, where the decision against our comrade will be finalized. Four years after his arrest, four years after the start of this particularly repressive undertaking, one year and some months after the December revolt, the state's constant and manic attempt to oppress, marginalize and criminalize the people of the struggle is becoming all the more clear. Giannis Dimitrakis' trial is very important, as much for the legal outcome of his case, as for if we will allow the state's manipulations and experiments against us to flourish

Our key weapon against repression and the prison system is active solidarity with all means possible.

Freedom for Giannis Dimitrakis

Freedom for all prisoners in struggle

Assembly for Solidarity

(Athens, Greece)

REGARDING THE CASE OF GIANNIS DIMITRAKIS

THE STORY OF A ROBBERY

On January 16th 2006, a group of four people rob a branch of the National Bank, on Solonos St. in the center of Athens. A completely calm robbery, as all eye witnesses there that day confirm, was in the end turned into a record breaking, terror-crazed thriller of epic proportions, a breach in time that dramatically overturned the lives of tens of people, a critical point in the history of an entire political milieu. And that, thanks to the unique "heroics" of that bank's security guard, who thought that he must run and stop the doers at all costs, because in his code of values the insured money of a bank is more important than anything. Even human life… or otherwise, as Einstein had said, two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the first.

The result of the overzealousness of that guard and a few other pigs who rushed to help in his "pious" cause was the midday transformation of Panepistimiou St. into a shooting range for cops on live targets, in contrast with those being pursued who didn't use their weaponry… A nearly dead street vendor and a blood soaked, dying bank robber on the ground receiving kick after kick, close the curtains on act one.

Act two opens with the name and nature of the fallen wounded: Giannis Dimitrakis, anarchist. The authority unleashes a frontal attack on the anarchist milieu. Comrades are abducted from the streets, surrounded by cops with weapons drawn, and lead to police headquarters. Giannis receives the by no means friendly visits of the interrogator arch terrorist I. Dioti in the hospital emergency room. The mass media slander and try to devour him, his friends and family. Three of his friends and comrades are carefully selected based on their profile (long-standing presence in the antiauthoritarian space, continuous action against the enemies of freedom) so as to fill in the puzzle. The comrades Simos and Marios Seisidis and Grigoris Tsironis are propelled underground. The series "robbers in black – terrorists in red" has just begun.

A year and half later, Giannis is tried as member of a criminal organization for that and another six robberies. Although that scenario collapses in court and Giannis is found innocent for all the other robberies, the judges, wanting to raze the crystal-clear spirit of him who stood before them defending his actions, and set an example for any future Dimitrakis, convicted him with an exhaustive sentence of 35 years.

Four years have passed since the robbery of the bank on Solonos St. In these four years, Giannis has been transferred from prison to prison, has struggled against them, has survived under the worst conditions, has seen his name featured repeatedly in the papers. On April 28th, he will be tried in the court of appeals.

In these four years, he and we have seen the wanted comrades considered suspect and being blamed for anything that happens, from bank robberies to bomb placements and attacks on police stations, consistently targeted by the media and finally declared as wanted with reward money by the notorious villain M. Xrisixoidi in a new, wild and not so far west… We however want and continue to believe that society will refuse to cooperate and become an informant.

In these four years we have seen the arch-thieving capitalists in power shamelessly and legally rob our freedom, the air we breath, our incomes and of course the public funds, without EVER, not even ONE of them, the same who sentenced Giannis to 35 years in prison, being held accountable.

In these four years we have seen and suffered the serial criminal activity of authority against the impoverished, the workers and all those who struggle, with persecutions, imprisonment, beatings, layoffs, pogroms and murders. We have seen repression grow immensely and adopt the dogma of zero tolerance and guilty until proven innocent. We see a terrified authority, targeting and criminalizing the entire anarchist antiauthoritarian milieu, trying to deter the linking to and diffusion of its ideas and techniques in a society on the verge of… on what verge? Because we are romantic, we want and continue to believe on the verge of a new, even grander December. Perhaps March, perhaps June…

In these four years we have shown our solidarity for the wanted comrades and of course for Giannis. We have stood beside him, with the absolute respect which his steadfast fighting spirit and entire ethos have inspired in us. However since besides romantic, we are also stubborn, WE DEMAND HIS IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

Unbelievable but not. Former Aryan Nations bossoroo plans to open night club for kids near my town...They'll be more on this, I guarantee it.

Charles Juba,once influential Neo-Nazi, to open under-21 club in Odessa, claims he's left white power behind

Charles Juba, once considered among the most influential men in the Neo-Nazi movement, is opening a new under-21 nightclub in Odessa this weekend. He says he's left his past behind, but Odessa residents are still understandably concerned about what kind of influence the man who once ran "Gas A Jew For Jesus.com" might have on their kids, let alone how his club will make Odessa look.

Juba plans to open The Black Flag Club Friday night at the Prime Outlets Mall. Last night at a board of alderman meeting, angry Odessa residents confronted Juba who told them: "I'm a father. I'm a business owner. I've walked away from my past over five years ago."

Charles Juba, in more hateful times

According to the Black Flag Club's Web site, Juba picked the name as a reference to the banner of Civil War guerilla fighter William Quantrill, whose most famous raid, the Lawrence Massacre, left 183 men and boys dead and the town burning. The club's Web site says it's the "newest, the biggest, and the best 20 & under club for music dancing, bands, and fun!" In fall 2003, the Southern Poverty Law Center put Juba on its "40 to Watch" list.

According to the SPLC's report, the one-time Lancaster, Pennsylvania, factory worker became head of a Pennsylvania KKK group at 21, eventually rising to the rank of grand dragon of the International Keystone Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

In 1992 he ran a telephone hotline threatening to lynch blacks and telling them to swim back to Africa with "a Jew under each arm." He was a member of multiple white-power groups over the next decade, settling with the Neo-Nazi Aryan Nations.

Juba also ran a non-defunct Web site called "Gas a Jew For Jesus.com" to provide Aryan youth with "as many helpful hints as possible in artistic ways of gassing Jews." Though considered influential in the movement, he wasn't above embarassing moments, including one in which a former girlfriend posted info about her interest in sadomasochism to the Web.

Juba moved to the metro in 2005, claiming he was going to open a new Aryan Nations headquarters here. He supposedly left the group before it happened.

Randy Garcia, the mall's property manager, did not respond to interview requests for this story. Local FBI officials who track activity in white supremacy declined to comment on Juba's current level of involvement in the movement, if any.

A little ruckus can't hurt can it? I'm posting a screed (is that a word) I found on what I believe must be a British blog concerning, well, concerning 'X-o-phobia.' The guy who wrote this thing is talking about the growing notion that there is something wrong with attacking any particular religions atrocious practices and beliefs. You know, the theory, that well it's "their" religion, so we shouldn't say anything. I think, if I understand it right, this type of thinking would find a nice home in the mind of those "post modernist" thinkers who used to dither about this and that. It's like "god forbid (ha ha)" that someone would criticize the Taliban for their
treatment of women, because after all isn't that part of their religion...and culture...or something.

Anyways, I got a kick out of this. I think Mr. David Osler is on to something here.

But don't tell the Pope or those who defend him (seen here on horseback), okay.

In defence of cliterodectomophobia: the left, secularism and religion
OVER 90% of women in some African countries have undergone female genital mutilation, with religion the primary justification advanced by the perpetrators. Do you object to this? What are you, some sort of cliterodectomophobe or something? Beware, comrade. You are on the slippery slope to ritual child sacrificeophobia, that reductio ad absurdum of the arrogant eurocentric liberalism you clearly espouse.

We live in a climate in which the religious are increasingly strident in their insistence that they should be allowed to do anything and everything, including actions prohibited to others, solely because their interpretation of their faith enjoins it. It is time for the rest of us to take a stand, and tell them as gently as necessary that this is not so.

There was a time when the left, at least in its majority, would have come to the defence of rationalism and secularism. Not any more; Britain's most widely-read socialist blog has just reprinted without criticism a polemic written by an Opus Dei supporter in defence of Pope Benedict XVI's role in the Catholicism's growing child abuse scandal. When it comes to religion, someone is very obviously losing the plot; please God, let it be Andy Newman rather than me.

Secularism has been part of the left's DNA since the time that the word 'left' first took on a political connotation in eighteenth century France. Often this has entailed out-and-out atheism. The Bolsheviks, for instance, formed The League of the Militant Godless in 1925, and the clue is very much in the name.

Perhaps it was this outfit that blogger Liam MacUaid – a man with strong affinities to the Leninist tradition – subconsciously had in mind when he recently berated prominent liberals (as well as yours truly) for our apparent 'militant godlessness'. Sorry mate, but I don't know where to start here.

The irony is that I nowhere advocate godlessness of even the tamest stripe, and unconditionally support freedom of religion as being among the most basic of all human rights. I use the designation 'secularism' strictly in the dictionary sense of 'the attitude that religion should have no place in civil affairs'. This position is entirely consistent with theism in most manifestations, and one which many believers embrace in recognition both that faith is a private matter, and that a multifaith society cannot work if one doctrine enjoys a legally privileged position.

OK, my opening paragraph was deliberately provocative. I can already anticipate the objections that prominent Islamic clerics and leaders of the Coptic church in Egypt have ruled that the practice finds no sanction in either the Qu'ran or the Bible.

But that misses the point. Given the fragmentary nature of Islam and Christianity, no single authority is entitled to rule on what is and what is not admissible. There is no biblical basis for the bodily assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, for instance. But it is not the place of anybody outside Catholicism to decide what Catholics should properly believe on this score. Religion is whatever floats your numinosity.

Given the inherently subjective nature of religious belief, if a practitioner says that a practice is religiously motivated, than religiously motivated that practice undeniably is. Whether any given baby girl is about to be christened down the local branch of the CoE or undergo the total removal of her external genitalia is beside the point.

Accordingly, it would be ridiculous to claim that nurses who wish to wear crucifixes at work are not religiously motivated because the wearing of crucifixes at work is not commonly regarded as a core requirement of Christianity.

It is entirely reasonable that the medical authorities make a determination on whether necklaces of any type constitute a health and safety hazard in hospital wards, and enforce prohibition if appropriate. That I leave to them. Outside of work, individuals should be allowed to dress as they please.

And more than that. From a pedagogical point of view, it is patently undesirable that teaching assistants be clad in full face covering when in charge of young children. The niqab should be out of the question in these circumstances, again with precisely the same stipulations when people are off duty. Appeal to religious motivation is not some variety of divinely-backed all-purpose Get Out of Jail Free card, despite the attempts of some to play it as such.

And more than that still. I have for decades prevaricated on the question of faith schools. While I have never thought they were a good idea, my underlying leftwing libertarianism has made me open to argument that parental choice should be factored into the equation. Moreover, sheer pragmatism suggests that abolition is not politically do-able.

But on further reflection, I fear that the way in which they have served to cement Protestant-Catholic sectarianism in the North of Ireland, Scotland and even some English cities will be much multiplied as Islamic and evangelical schools become more common. There is a ratchet effect at work. If that were not enough, it is increasingly obvious that they act as conduits for the miseducation of children in backward and anti-scientific notions.

The left in any case opposes educational apartheid based on class; it should equally oppose educational apartheid based on religion. The only consistent secular position is that faith schools should be scrapped along with Eton and Harrow, and that all education should be both in the public sector and resolutely non-religious. There. Said it.

And finally, we urgently need to get over the argument from 'X-o-phobia', which is rapidly descending into meaninglessness. Since the notion of Islamophobia first entered common parlance, this stupid word game has been taken over by the right to institute something called Christianopobia. This, in a country where bishops get reserved places in the legislature.

Now the even uglier neologism Catholophobia is in the process of being erected as an absolute defence against the critique of this particular variant of Christianity. Can Scientologophobia be all that far away? For that matter, can I patent the term 'secularismophobia', and instantly find Andy and Liam guilty on this count?

Those that guard the right to proselytise implicitly grant consent to both counter-proselysis and secular critique. It was Karl Marx himself who insisted that 'the criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo'. It should be stressed does not entail advocacy of gratuitously offensive attacks on religious congregations, which serve no purpose. That much is plain good manners.

But it does mean relentless and sustained ideological assault on the religious representatives of the ruling class, from the Pope through to Pat Robertson and onwards to the repulsive theocracy in power in Tehran. On that, we should be irreconcilable. If the left cannot shortly rediscover such a very basic truth, it could soon be finished altogether.

"Virtually ignored the war inside Colombia rages on and the cost to civilians continues to grow.

Christophe Beney, who heads the International Red Cross (ICRC) delegation in Colombia says, ""The south and the Pacific coast are among the areas worst affected by the armed conflict.Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities are especially hard hit. Many are forced to flee because of threats totheir lives. Others are killed, injured or subjected to sexual violence. And yet most of their tragedies go unreported."

Beney highlighted official figures showing that 3.3 million people have been internally displaced, forced from their homes by the conflict, out of a population of 46 million.

Rafael Elias Fernandez, a representative for the Displaced Peoples Organization, says that the coastal communities have been "abandoned by the state" and that there are "many inconsistencies in the humanitarian aid" provided. The majority of these citizens were forced from their homes in the Montes de Maria mountain range and are now living in extreme poverty in the department capital.

In addition, the ICRC recorded 800 violations of international human rights law in Colombia in the last year. This figure includes 28 murders, 61 attacks on civilians, and 84 disappearances which are thought to be linked to the ongoing conflict."

Red Cross: Colombian victims "almost invisible"
Victims of Colombia’s armed conflict have become “almost invisible” to those in power according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

The ICRC report on Colombia was released in Geneva on Monday and warned that the still bloody civil conflict in the country’s rural areas has become virtually ignored. "Many are being forced to flee because of threats to their lives. Other are subjected to extra-judicial killings or to sexual violence, and yet most of their tragedies go unreported," said the ICRC’s Christophe Beney. The report identified the indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities as most in danger of the armed conflict and denounced the recruitment of minors as soldiers by illegal armed groups.

The ICRC also said that Colombia’s displace population, already one of the world’s biggest at over three million, continues to grow. A press release by the organization cited the plight of one such victim:

“We were in the house when we suddenly heard gunfire", explains María, who recently fled her home in the south of the country. "When we looked out into the courtyard, we saw my brother's body lying on the ground. They let us bury him, then they forced us to leave our village. Who knows what would have become of us if we had decided to stay.” When people like María are driven from their homes, they generally lose everything they have.

The Colombian government subsequently condemned the ICRC’s assessment and several officials defended the so-called "democratic security" policies of President Alvaro Uribe. “The FARC still have the capacity to do harm, but they do not have a greater capacity now than they had 8 years ago,” claimed government peace commissioner Frank Pearl. Armed forces head Freddy Padilla denied ICRC claims that the leftist FARC guerillas have undergone a recent resurgence and said that the rebels are down to only 8000 soldiers.

Monday, April 26, 2010

Dozens of political prisoners have languished in U.S. prisons since as far back as the 60s while the government claims such prisoners do not even exist. The same self righteous set of politicians in Washington who enjoy criticizing the human rights records of countries they don't happen to like at the moment refuse to even discuss what is happening inside their own country. Black, American Indian, Hispanic American, other people of color, and even some white political activists of various stripes, men and women, remained locked behind bars in federal and state prisons across this land. There should be, but is not, a continuous outcry by all those who call themselves even progressive demanding their freedom.

I may not agree with a whole lot The Nation of Islam has to say, but they sure as hell got this one right in their newspaper The Final Call.New report calls for justice for U.S. political prisoners and takes human rights case to the United NationsU.S. political prisoners have endured decades of abuse, many face death in prison
By Richard B. Muhammad -Editor-in-Chief

CHICAGO (FinalCall.com) - When it comes to the United Nations and countries charged with rights violations, the United States is usually the chief accuser of others and remains a self-ordained defender of human rights.

But a recent report filed with the world body raises the ugly issue of political prisoners and repression in America and her human rights violations.

"The United States is very, very concerned when its citizens begin to raise questions in these international forums, because the United States still prefers to posture itself, including the Obama administration, as still the leader of the free world and that they don't have any human rights violations and they certainly don't have any political prisoners, and we have to dispel that notion in the international community," said Stan Willis, of the National Conference of Black Lawyers.

Atty. Willis filed the report April 14 as part of a process in which the United Nations reviews the status of each country and its human rights record. The U.S. is currently under review and will respond in November during a gathering in Geneva, Switzerland.

The United Nations' Universal Period Review process was introduced in 2006 and community-based, non-governmental and other organizations are allowed to point out human rights issues within their countries and where they feel violations of international law or UN treaties have been committed.

For Black America, the process is another way to hold the U.S. government accountable and to demand the release of Black Power era leaders and members of organizations whose political views are objectionable, said Mr. Willis, in an interview.

Beyond freeing an aging population of some 100 former Black Panthers, members of the MOVE organization and other revolutionary-oriented groups, taking the issue to the United Nations puts America and her dirty laundry on front street, said the longtime activist and lawyer.

"They (American officials) do not want to have these issues reach the world's people. How do you go into Iraq or Afghanistan telling people about their democracy when you got Black people that are locked down in prison for 30-40 years as political prisoners?"

Whether the problem was leftist ideology, nationalists and those calling for a Black homeland, demands for a new economic order or Native American rights and anti-Vietnam War efforts, government security agencies infiltrated dissident groups.

The security activity went hand-in-hand with crackdowns on Black, Latino, Native American and even some White groups demanding a more just and peaceful society—and greater demands for respect for rights and opposition to police violence.

The continued incarceration and mistreatment of these prisoners violates UN treaties and conventions that guarantee human rights, forbid torture and outlaw racial and political targeting by government, the report charges.
Surveillance and destroying organizations

The plight of political prisoners is largely rooted in the 1960s-1970s era surveillance against Black groups, which included respected civil rights organizations as well as so-called Black radicals, according to Mr. Willis. About two-thirds of the jailed dissidents are Black, he said.

The FBI teamed with local law enforcement to attack, disrupt and destroy groups like the Black Panther Party and the Nation of Islam, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which was admitted during congressional hearings in 1976 empanelled to probe these secret domestic wars.

The covert Counterintelligence Program run by then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, and approved by the White House, focused in specially on the Black Panther Party, and most political prisoners are either former Panthers or from MOVE, a radical "back-to-nature" group whose homes were bombed by the Philadelphia Police Department in 1985.

"U.S. political prisoners have languished in U.S. prisons for decades under cruel and inhumane conditions. Several have died in prison; others have endured years of solitary confinement, poor medical health care, various other forms of abuse, and perfunctory parole hearings resulting in routine denial of human rights," the report noted.

The report calls for the unconditional release of political prisoners jailed as a result of the government's Counterintelligence Program, an executive review of all cases related to the covert operation, a murder probe into the deaths of Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark and actions to repair and redress harm done and to prevent similar acts in the future.

While Atty. Willis is pushing the plight of political prisoners, he said the impact of the government wrongdoing went beyond the heavy price young activists paid at the time.

"Movements move forward with masses of people but they move forward with a certain kind of leadership," said Mr. Willis.

During the revolutionary times of the 1960s and 1970s, youth and students were influenced by the efforts of the Nation of Islam, Congress of Racial Equality, and NAACP as well as the African liberation movement on the continent and Cuba's revolution, he continued.

A type of leadership was developing that America had never seen before and the government moved to crush that leadership, Mr. Willis said.

The Panthers and SNCC were wiped out and law enforcement and government sent clear signals that if others persisted in demanding progressive action they would also be destroyed, he said.

"Our community suffered. Our community deserves reparations just on that issue because it set us back in the 1960s and we see where we are now, we haven't recovered from that," he said. "It's not just those in prison that suffered, and they certainly suffered mightily because they have been locked down and some of them are dying in prison. Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were murdered. But the community suffered," he said. Young leaders Hampton and Clark headed the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party. They were shot and killed in a police raid on a west side home in 1969.
U.S. power vs. the power of the people

While the U.S. wields considerable power at the United Nations, in particular with its veto power on the Security Council, Atty. Willis rejects the notion that holding the superpower to international standards is a futile effort.

The General Assembly is largely made up of delegates from around the world, and public opinion and moral authority is bigger than U.S. power, he said.

The lawyer pointed to fighting in Chicago for two decades for Blacks tortured in a police precinct and officers under former police commander John Burge. It was only after the case, which involved hundreds of suspects coerced into making confessions because of torture, was put before international bodies that U.S. law enforcement officials moved against Mr. Burge. He will go on trial May 10 in federal court and is accused of obstruction of justice and perjury.

"It was only after the United Nations mentioned torture in the context of Abu Grahaib, Guantanamo Bay and Chicago, in the same paragraph, that John Burge was indicted within months of that," Mr. Willis said. The Justice Dept. reached out about the case after the world body noted the violations, he said.
International forums and broader remedies

More involvement is needed in international forums, where violations of basic rights to education, health, employment, housing, and abuses of discrimination and police brutality can be brought out, Mr. Willis argued.

Essentially the forums provide a way to call attention to government failures or misdeeds and ask that the UN or other bodies where the U.S. holds membership to investigate and demand America comply with international law or treaties. The forums can also be highly embarrassing for the world's greatest democracy.

"We can have a mighty voice because when we speak in the international context it resonates with African people all over the world, unlike anybody else, and they look for us to speak because they know we are in the lion's den," said Atty. Willis.

The U.S. civil rights laws also say what government can't do, while the international standards stress what countries must do, Mr. Willis explained. Under the United Nations standards, countries must educate children and localities could not argue that because of a lower tax base Black children get a lesser quality or failing education, he explained.

Remedies are much broader in the international context, which include reparations as a common remedy, but civil rights laws don't provide for reparations, Mr. Willis added.

It's not just going to Geneva but confronting local entities, like school districts, and being able to redefine education and press districts to come in line with international standards, he said. Blacks have also tried to take their struggle to the United Nations in the past, Mr. Willis said.

"We have a history of trying to get there, but we haven't got there because I think we got so focused on civil rights we forgot there is a remedy out there and we can draw on the collective sentiments of the world community by trying to take our case into a more international forum," he said. "We don't have to rely on who is the president, we can force the president because the president and the administration is very, very sensitive to world opinion. There is no question about that," he said.

Concerns about the arrest and targeting of Arab and Palestinian communities and Muslims after 9-11 and 23-hour-a-day lockdowns make government abuses relevant today, Atty. Willis said.

Political prisoners have traditionally been locked down, not because they violated prison policy or disrupted prison but because officials don't want disruption based on ideas, he said.

The Obama administration, unlike its predecessors, has taken the position that they support human rights and the U.S. has a member on the Human Rights Council, said Mr. Willis.

His goal is to get the political prisoners on the agenda, but filing a report isn't enough, he said.

It will take more awareness and education of the Black community, activism and lobbying for political prisoners at the United Nations, town hall meetings to explain where the issues are, and getting the academic and faith communities to weigh in on the problem, he said.

"It's a way of organizing our people and encouraging them to take these international forums seriously and adding that to their tools of raising issues related to various problems we have in the United States. It doesn't mean you stop doing anything else.

"The fact that I am trying to raise issues in the international forum doesn't mean I am stopping suing police," he said.

"It just means this is an additional weapon that we have to try to get this country in compliance with international human rights laws."

FCN is a distributor (and not a publisher) of content supplied by third parties. Original content supplied by FCN and FinalCall.com News is Copyright 2009 FCN Publishing, FinalCall.com. Content supplied by third parties are the property of their respective owners.

Anarchists were all set to confront a marching group of fascists in the town district in Plzen in the Czech Republic this weekend when the Mayor declared the fascists out of order. Personally, I know we can't depend on the state to defend us against fascists, but I'm not going to get down on the Mayor.

The march, announced under the name March in Support of Political Prisoners, lasted a few minutes and the participants were only able to proceed a short distance. The right wing racists waved black and red-and white flags with the Czech lion and a number of banners. Before the march started, the police checked whether the banners and flags complied with the law. They decided they did not.

Nazi debacle in Plzeň: 100 Nazis, six of them detained, 200 counter-protesters

Yesterday Jiří Strobach, magistrate of the central municipal district of Plzeň, dispersed a previously announced Nazi march shortly after it began. Deputy Regional Police Director Jaromír Kníže later told journalists the demonstration had been dispersed because the slogans on the clothing of some participants were most probably illegal. High Commissioner Jana Václavová told the Czech Press Agency that police had detained four people at the march, including a foreign national, and detained another two after it was dispersed. Strobach said the gathering fundamentally deviated from its stated purpose as described to the authorities in January by the conveners, "support for political prisoners". At the time it was announced, officials had no legal reason to ban the event. "Some of the speeches by the participants in this gathering (today) clearly showed that there was a fundamental deviation from the stated purpose of the gathering, and that is a violation of the law on assembly. Other laws were broken by speeches aimed at suppressing human rights and freedoms. We warned the organizers the law was being broken, but they did not correct the situation," the magistrate said. (…) Those suspected of committing the crime of promoting the suppression of human rights include a 26-year-old native of Plzeň, a 32-year-old native of Ostrava, and a 22-year-old man from the southern Plzeň region, all of whom were wearing clothing with objectionable inscriptions. Václavová later specified that a 26-year-old foreign national was suspected of demonstrating sympathy for a movement aimed at suppressing human rights and freedoms due to a tattoo of an objectionable symbol on a part of his body clearly visible to others. Police later detained a 40-year-old man from the northern Plzeň region and a 20-year-old Praguer over slogans on their clothing. A 29-year-old man from Plzeň was also taken into custody on suspicion of committing a misdemeanor against public order. "The decision to initiate criminal proceedings against specific individuals will be made on the basis of expert evaluations," Václavová said. A cordon of police officers directed the marchers, some of whom were evidently German and Polish nationals, toward the bus station, preventing them from entering the center of town. At Husovo náměstí (Hus Square) officers recommended various routes for dispersal, and the demonstrators slowly left in small groups for their cars or for the bus station. Police were prepared to monitor the situation in the town for the rest of the day.